Ticking toxic time bomb

Thilafushi Island, a half-hour boat trip from Male, is a huge garbage dump that is dangerously polluting the Maldives azure waters

By Adam Plowright / AFP, MALE, Maldives

“The project that is going ahead will monitor air pollution and also the sea pollution near Thilafushi Island and so no further expansion by waste will be done for Thilafushi,” Kareem told AFP.

The Maldives Association of Tourism Industry declined repeated interview requests from AFP seeking comment on efforts of resorts to reduce their environmental impact.

Site manager Islam is hopeful he will get new machinery allowing them to move waste more easily and sort it. Rows of broken diggers and bulldozers sit nearby in a vehicle graveyard. Behind him as he talks stands a row of palm trees discarded by a hotel resort which were planted in an incongruous attempt to beautify a place of toxic smoke clouds and buzzing swarms of flies.